Fox Newsrecently hosted Thompson, where he proceeded to pin the NIU shooter Steven Kazmierczak’s
actions on violent videogames. Thompson started off, “We find from brain scans
studies out of Harvard that if you get started playing, for example, violent
video games you can you are more likely to copycat the behaviors in the games.”

The Florida attorney continued, “You can rehearse these type
of massacres on simulators which are called video games and you can are therefore
made more proficient in doing this.”

Thompson’s finger wasn’t alone in pointing at video games as
fuel for the NIU tragedy. In its version of the story, the New York Post linked the killer to
his habit of playing Counter Strike while studying sociology at Northern
Illinois University in 2003 and 2004.

Omitted from the New
York Post story, however, was that Counter Strike was a game played by many
other students at school. The Northwest
Herald wrote, “Kazmierczak often would play the video game Counter
Strike, a first-person shooting game, the roommates said, but they were quick
to add that the game was nothing unusual for dormitory halls.”

The Herald pointed
to other potential issues, such as Kazmierczak’s time at an inpatient psychiatric
rehabilitation center, and his reported discontinuation of his anti-depressant medication several
weeks before the shooting.

"So, I think the same thing of the music industry. They can't say that they're losing money, you know what I'm saying. They just probably don't have the same surplus that they had." -- Wu-Tang Clan founder RZA